Apple just patented some crazy camera technology for the iPhone

The iPhone has always had a solid built-in camera, although some would argue that this isn’t the case with recent iterations, but Apple wants to give it an even better one. According to a new patent, the company is working on three separate sensors that form light splitting splitting system which divides light into three colors and greatly improves the quality of videos. 

An Apple patent published on Tuesday details a miniaturized iPhone camera system that employs a light-splitting cube to parse incoming rays into three color components, each of which are captured by separate sensors. As granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple’s U.S Patent No. 8,988,564 for a “Digital camera with light splitter” examines the possibilities of embedding a three-sensor prism-based camera module within the chassis of a thin wireless device, such as an iPhone. Light splitting systems do not require color channel processing or demosaicing, thereby maximizing pixel array resolution. Commonly found in prosumer video cameras, and more recently in handheld camcorder models, three-sensor imaging technology splits incident light entering a camera into three wavelengths, or colors, using a prism or prisms. Usually identified as red, green and blue, the split images are picked up by dedicated imaging sensors normally arranged on or close to the prism face.